Even Mario takes it easy every so often. Shouldn't you?

Thanksgiving is a time of year when families get together and eat copious amounts of food, then struggle to breathe as they fall into a deep stupor on the couch. What better time than this to play video games? But don’t overdo it with something overly stimulating like Ninja Gaiden or Call of Duty. Nah, here’s a list of 10 games that you can basically shut your brain off and just play while you rest off that fifth helping of turkey.

Tetris:

For the NES, Game Boy, cell phone, and pretty much eveyrthing ever.

While Tetris is undisputedly the best puzzle game ever created (according to myself), it doesn’t require all too much thinking. Sure, you can definitely push yourself to crank up the high score, but really you don’t have to do a lot when you’re just cleaning house and keeping the game from ending. Just one row at a time, which gives you minimal points in the long run, but stretches play for quite a while. Plus, you get funky tunes to hum along with/doze to.

Final Fantasy VII:

Attack button, attack button, attack button, HEAL, attack button...

RPG’s are great for this day due to their main characteristic: Repetitive level grinding. Just about every RPG has a point where you’re encouraged to just sit and grind your way around the dungeon until you either get to the end or keep making your character stronger. Final Fantasy VII is great for that. The plot points are mostly incoherent next to the amount of random battles you encounter. Most any Final Fantasy game works perfect for the brain-off moments after the feast, but VII took things up a level with a story that you couldn’t understand even with the a good night’s rest and mounds of caffeine, so just shush and kill some lizards/spiders/robots/cottages.

Pokémon:

Hey fire newt, go attack that blue turtle thing. Sure, use Ember, I don't care.

Perhaps even better than the Final Fantasy games, the Pokémon series finds a niche in having no plot whatsoever but hundreds of creatures to obtain or evolve. And the only way to accomplish this is through hours of tedious battles. But hark! What’s that? You’re tired and just need an activity to do in between breathing and more breathing? Perfect time to train that Magikarp into a Gyarados or to go searching for all those legendary things or whatever. Just find some tall grass, walk in circles, and watch those levels crawl by.

Super Mario World:

Just going for a nice Sunday stroll here on my dinosaur...

The Mario games are good for a challenge most of the time, but something about Super Mario World just seems a bit more relaxed. It’s certainly no Sonic the Hedgehog in terms of “Oh look out for that thing at high speed!” Rather, Super Mario World allows you to take your time and savor the experience. There never seems like a huge rush to complete anything. Ev...

They are shooting pure joy from my heart.

Halloween is pretty much here, but for some of us that doesn’t mean much. Why is that? Well we’re too busy playing video games to care what’s happening around us. As a result, we may accidentally pass up the day in lieu of just playing something bright and cheery, but there are other options for us shut-ins that still want to celebrate Halloween with some good atmospheric games. So here are 10 Games You Should Play On Halloween.

Resident Evil 4:

Sure, the first game is great and the most recent installment is pretty good, but Resident Evil 4 knocked my socks off when I first played it on the GameCube all those years ago. It was the perfect mix of fluid gameplay with situations that terrified me to no end due to stuff like, oh, I don’t know, chainsaw wielding zombies or Wolverine-style monsters with their eyes sown shut. I freaked, but I never stopped playing.

The thing about RE4 is that it pushed games to be at least as good as it was by deciding what 3rd-person gameplay should be for shooters and what to expect with quick-time events (one of two games I was actually okay with the silly feature). You can pick up a copy for the GameCube, PS2, or PC, and the Wii has a version with motion controls that work extremely well ( Amazon’s got it for under $15 ). Just do yourself a favor and play through if you haven’t already. Just tell me when you get to Del Lago.

Silent Hill 2:

This is Pyramid Head. This thing should not be.

I was forced to play both Silent Hill 1 and 2 by my friends and I made fun of them the whole way through, especially number 2. And why? Because I didn’t want to let on that I’d probably be crying unless I found a means of coping with fear since Silent Hill 2 throws you into a bad situation and just makes it worse. If you haven’t heard of a Silent Hill game, you probably live a happier life than I, otherwise Amazon has the PS2 version for around $10 .

See, Silent Hill is a town that’s cursed since a little girl was pushed to become pure evil and fill the town with demons (yes, I hate it when this happens, too). The combat is awful on purpose as the main character isn’t a great fighter or solider. He just wants to find his dead wife because she told him to meet him in Silent Hill (if your dead anything ever says this, don’t go). You will see horrible things and you will hear horrible things and by the end of the game you will have had to do horrible things and you won’t sleep with the lights off for a while. Seriously, if you ever want to terrify someone who’s played a Silent Hill game, flick off the lights and blare a disaster siren. They will go hide in a corner; I guarantee it.

Super Ghouls & Ghosts:

And that's about as far as I get.

No, not every game has to be extremely terrifying to make for good Halloween playing. Super Ghouls & Ghosts (and really ...

This is everything that's right with the industry.

Alright, go buy Uncharted 2. I don’t even need to give you a full review at this point. This is the reason to own a PS3, this is the best game thus far this year, this is the game that has no glaring faults for me to pick out. Buy the game yourself, buy it for a loved one, request it for a charity, I don’t care what you do as long as it ends with Uncharted 2 being bought and played by somebody.

Are you still here? Okay, I’ll elaborate since I guess it’s my job.

First the Worst, Second the Best

Those of you that played the first Uncharted on the PS3 may either have high hopes for the sequel or are extremely nervous as to what may happen. Naughty Dog once again develops for the Uncharted series (it’s their property so…yeah), and it is very apparent that they just don’t allow faults to exist from one game to the next. Pretty much everything you thought was wrong with the first game is corrected for the second. Uncharted 2 completely outdoes the first in every way possible, so don’t bother with looking at the previous title as a standard for what to expect. If you do, your standards will be blown away.

I will go ahead and say that Uncharted 2 doesn’t actually do anything new for itself. Everything that’s good is a concept taken from some other franchise somewhere along the line. Gears of War fans will feel déjà vu during firefights as the cover system borrows heavily. None of this is a bad thing. Uncharted 2 looked around for what worked and incorporated it into their own game. This is the correct way to program, just in case any developers are reading right now and weren’t aware (also I’m available to write for your game developers, so look me up!). Uncharted 2 doesn’t steal concepts; it just makes sure the overall experience of the game plays at a level of polish rarely ever seen.

More Polish Than a Nail Saloon

Check out the amount of detail here.

That’s the main note to take here: Uncharted 2 is fiercely polished. Naughty Dog aren’t messing around with something they clearly have respect for and they aren’t disappointing their fans by rehashing or phoning in a new title that’ll sell well regardless of how well it actually plays. You’ll have a hard time going to bed at night or getting anything else done in your day since you’ll just want to play Uncharted 2 until it’s finished. And then you’ll want to play it again. And then you’ll want to play its extremely well done multiplayer mode.

Oh yes, did I not yet mention that they got multiplayer done right as well? Silly me. A game this big, you’d expect multiplayer to just sort of exist next to the main story for the heck of it. Not so as Uncharted 2 has quite a selection of multiplayer modes to appeal to players of all preferences. You’ll get some Capture the Flag scena...